Antony Gormley, Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Paul McCarthy, Nicolas Party and Danh Vō in Copyists
14 June 2025—2 February 2026
Group exhibition at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Metz, France
From 14 June 2025 to 2 February 2026, in an exceptional collaboration with the Musée du Louvre, the Centre Pompidou-Metz will be presenting an unusual exhibition dedicated to the creativity of copyists. Copying was central to the classical tradition. Copying the works of great artists is a tool for learning about the canons, techniques and stories. Absorbing their expertise and adopting their mastery is a pathway to knowledge and artistic creation, from the most academic to the most contemporary.
A number of contemporary artists have been invited to make copies at the Musée du Louvre, following in the footsteps of many of their predecessors, both famous and little known. The guests invited to perform this act of decoding, investigation and understanding, juggling old forms and new, include painters, draughtsmen sculptors, video artists, designers and writers. They offer different ways of copying and different conceptions of the copy and of the status of the works exhibited, in a tension between originality and duplication.
This exhibition brings together this form of artistic creation and this heritage, revealing them in a fresh light. Contemporary art does not necessarily seek to break with history but, on the contrary, to draw on it and be enriched by it, to understand it and understand itself. This project, which is both a continuation of history (in the copy’s very form) and radically new (through the works created), is also a meditation on the current state of life. At the same time, it is a mediation on creation, in this ‘unseparated’ world, in which the power of works must contend with with the power of images.